It is a bit of a mystery why 1815 people (that’s nearly five people a day) should be drawn to a page for discussing Alfred William Green, but then completely fail to discuss him when they get there. By contrast, only 130 people visited the page that actually has information about Alfred William Green.

Jessie Schultz was Val’s great great grand mother, who came to South Africa from Germany in 1858, and it would be nice to know if any of the people who visited her page are related to us, but none of them is saying.

Here are some more general statistics for the site as a whole, and, sadly, they seem to indicate that collaborative family history research is not very popular:

That’s quite a lot of visitors, but the emptiness of the “Messages” section shows that the feedback is almost zero, which is why the edits are relatively few. If few people respond, there is little motivation to add to the information.

So I’m still a bit disappointed. I thought the wiki format was ideal for family participation, and that other members of the family could help to contribute to information, especially with family stories and biographical information.

I hoped that some cousins might start their own wikis, where the relations we have in common could be linked across two wikis, and then their own wiki could branch out to the unlinked families on their side of the family. In that way we could have a whole network of interlinked family wikis. But somehow it has never reached critical mass, and never taken off.

But maybe this year will be different.

Would it be too much to hope for — that we could have one linked family wiki a month? Or even a quarter? Or perhaps even one for the whole year? It’s quite easy to start one on Wikispaces, but it doesn’t even have to be there, there are other wiki sites as well.

2 Responses

Hello Steve, Val and Family
Trust that you are all well.
I have enjoyed reading your blogs over the past few years and feel guilty that I have never thanked you for these and the genealogical research that you have made. I particularly enjoyed your short biography on our great grand-father.
As you may know Cindy, Jamie-Lee, Paige and I relocated to Perth, Australia in 2001. Jamie-Lee was 14 and Paige, 12. I have directed them to your websites/blogs so that they can learn more about their families and have a better understanding of life in apartheid South Africa.
Jamie is now 25years old and is a primary school teacher. Paige is 23 and is about half way qualifying to be a P.E teacher . We also have a 3rd daughter, Tannah Raine Growdon, born in Perth on 22/05/2003. She is about to start grade 5. She often enquires about her family so your website and blogs will also be a great reference for her.

Thanks Mark, it’s good to hear from you and have news of the family. Jenny told me of the birth of Tannah Raine, and I added her to the family tree, but heard no more! And it’s John Tanner’s 10th birthday today too, I see. And here I was thinking of Jamie and Paige must be teenagers now, and realising that it’s about 20 years since we last saw them!